The story of Hitler's regime ending in a bunker in Berlin is well known. In the German language, the bunker is known as the Fuhrerbunker.

The bunker was constructed in two stages. It was built underground. The roof of the deeper bunker was eight meters below ground and three meters thick reinforced concrete.

Most of the bunker was demolished in the late 1980s around the time the Berlin Wall came down.

Hitler spent very little time in Berlin during the war. As the Allies closed in from the west and the Soviets closed in from the east, Hitler returned to Berlin and took up residence in the bunker in January 1945.

On 1 April 1945, Hitler moved the functions of Government from the Reich Chancellery, which was above ground, down into the bunker proper. This was the beginning of the final chapter for the Nazi regime.

At the beginning of April 2016, Matthias Kirschner and Jonas Oberg closed down the FSFE-Buro (office) in Dusseldorf. They rented a van to pack up all the contents of the Dusseldorf office and retreat back to Berlin. They had booked two nights hotel accommodation in Dusseldorf so they could wind up the office smoothly.

Things didn't go exactly to plan. The FSFE Fellows in Dusseldorf heard about this plan and scheduled an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to take place on the evening of Monday, 4 April 2016.

Kirschner and Oberg canceled their accommodation in the hotel and hotfooted it back to Berlin in a very hasty retreat.

There is one staff member who had been employed at the FSFE-Buro Dusseldorf for many years, Rainer Kersten. Working for an organization associated with the name of the real FSF and Dr Richard Stallman must have given him great pride. But Matthias Kirschner is not Dr Richard Stallman. German employees have certain expectations about the security of their employment and they can't simply be discarded on a whim. Kirschner, being a German too, would surely realize that. An FSFE web page snapshot from 22 March 2016 includes Rainer Kersten's name. His name appears in the next snapshot on 11 April. The subsequent snapshot, on 31 July 2016, Rainer Kersten is gone.

The exact day that Kirschner shuttered the FSFE-Buro Dusseldorf, 4 April, is the anniversary of the day the Soviet KGB finally disposed of the remains of Hitler and Goebels. On 4 April 1970, KGB agents exhumed the coffins, removed the bones and whatever human remains were left, incinerated them and then disposed of the ashes in a river.

When the FSFE council canceled the elections in 2018, the last Fellowship representative made a point of telling them they were behaving like cowards.

Subject: Re: [GA] Fwd: Re: Minutes from our extraordinary assembly
Date: Wed, 30 May 2018 20:41:44 +0100
From: Fellowship Representative elected by Community
To: ga@lists.fsfe.org

On 30/05/18 20:36, Heiki Lõhmus wrote:
> Dear [Representative of the Community],
>
>> In that case, can you please send the information to the GA list so all
>> members are aware of it?
> I can not as no record of individual votes exists.

Heiki, if you can't remember how people voted on such a toxic matter
just 4 days ago then are you competent to remain in council?

Or are you just being a coward?

Looking at the minutes of the annual general meeting in 2021, we see a mysterious discussion about "insurances of the association". It is not clear what risks they are insuring against but it smells like a situation where they know they've been pissing people off for years and now they have become preoccupied with insurance and security in much the same way that Hitler became preoccupied with his reinforced concrete bunker.

They pissed off the Dusseldorf community and ran away from an Extraordinary General Meeting on 4 April 2016.

They totally removed elections from the constitution in 2018. They are afraid of who the community might vote for next.

When female employees Susanne Eiswirt and Galia Mancheva asked about their workplace rights, Kirschner became afraid and sacked them all.

References